On June 2, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon and Charles W. Colson met in the Oval Office of the White House from 8:25 am to 9:11 am. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 727-001 of the White House Tapes.
Transcript (AI-Generated)This transcript was generated automatically by AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite this transcript as authoritative. Consult the Finding Aid above for verified information.
Those who are interested and who will follow through what you said are still going to get more than they've gotten out of the King of Kings because of the press.
Because we read every line of it.
So to us, it seems...
which you're not saying at all, but not to the public.
It reinforced their impression.
In fact, to me, it just capped off the trip beautifully.
And it is not overkill to do it that way, provided the press didn't panic.
And the press didn't panic.
The press, the TV commentators, the only thing was on the fact that they were NPCs, which is minor.
The rest of it was superior.
But I think you did absolutely the right thing.
I think you'll do the right thing now if you take a good rest with not much physicality because I think the public want to think that you are resting after that kind of a trip.
I don't think they... Yeah, what I understand, I don't know what you got off, is the fact that they gave you the suspension and how long I had to be talking.
Once you get into the gun?
Yeah.
When she found it, graciously, it was just.
Did they head out immediately?
Oh, yes.
And they never stopped applauding.
All eyes, the Senate members stood up and they were looking up, steady applause as she came in.
She was very, very gracious.
She looked at us.
She thought of which everybody made a point of in the commentaries.
I'm impressed.
Now, her accomplishments abroad have been...
Unbelievable.
She just, those goddamn press people are so impressive.
She does it better than anybody that's ever done it in that job.
Patty Kennedy once went abroad and spoke French and that, and of course they had the whole press with her anyway, and she was a glamorous person.
And old Eleanor, you know, was Eleanor.
And maybe didn't do anything that needed to be fast.
And Mrs. Johnson is smart as hell, but... Well, it was a good thing.
She did a good thing, but she basically came here as a two-party woman.
But the stuff that she's not doing now in these countries abroad has any...
Okay, that's...
They pull them back.
They go...
They push the people out of the way.
It's a big deal.
Well, she's definitely not a senior citizen.
She was on television last night with the police trying to hold her back.
And she said, no, I want to talk to the people.
And she just, she was absolutely superb throughout the entire trip.
I wish there were a place that we could get her in September.
I think she does a hell of a lot for us.
I think that does a lot of them.
Oh, enormous.
See, I'm in these meetings with the Kremlin.
I would sit in that goddamn lousy Kremlin for eight days.
It was like a prison.
Like a prison, except for just short movements.
All the meetings were held there, too.
We found out now.
That whole period of time.
So they never saw me.
Which isn't bad either, in a way.
No.
They sure got the impression it was a work in business, though.
Nobody raised any question on that, did they?
No.
And as I said, the whiskey, it was enough uncertainty about the agreements and the prices that nobody had the idea that it was just going to be something that started in the ocean.
One regret that I had is, in some way, I had a little talk I made with the Russian people
Well, you had two things.
First, you had that little story, which now I think will become a major story, a tiny story.
was a very moving story for the Russians.
It had to be for Americans, and it kept the whole damn thing about what peace is all about.
That's right.
Rather than the damn peace next to it, they don't really... You see, the average peacemaker doesn't think of the people.
It's only a theory.
The idealist.
That thing was quite a moving thing.
Well, what you had...
It was carried, I understand, in some... CBS took it up again.
But you had two things.
First, you had...
Surprisingly, 10 million people rated on Sunday to see it, which is very, very high.
Then you had 13 million who saw the CBS special, and that be some of the last.
And then you had fantastically good news coverage of that, because we call them networks, and ABC ran almost the full thing on their network news Sunday night.
They ran six minutes of the speech.
And the Tanya thing.
We also had the whole text reprinted and almost all of his figures.
Then there was a profile of Tanya that appeared in the New York Times.
It was.
Oh, yes.
It's great.
Showed the picture and showed the dates and then it took the excerpts from your speech.
And it was very well done.
And that ran around the country, the whole Times syndicate carried it.
And then there was reference to it again on Monday, I think.
So I think we, I think he got a much bigger audience than he did.
Thank you.
It played very well.
CBS used 11 minutes of it, Monday night, but the whole ending on Sunday.
And there were a lot of comments about that.
That carried for about two days, that speech.
Enormously effective.
And the editorials, of course, and the reporting from this trip, for the first time, there was a
great deal of personalizing being in the media, both television and print, that what a tremendous thing that this is that President Nixon has done.
What a tremendous personal diplomacy, what a skill, what courage, what vision the President has.
The President deserves credit.
There's a lot more that's actually true this time.
Those will never come along.
I must say, I read that history.
It's basically a double play, which couldn't work without either of them.
Nobody else did it.
Christ, the Cavs people didn't understand.
They didn't understand whatever the safety department was.
They didn't mark bad.
I think it's just out of their ballpark.
Out of their league.
Well, this is pretty true.
This is what happened.
We redid it.
We did it all right on this time.
Three years ago.
It was a pretty big job.
Yeah, sure.
I'll say it was.
But the comments have been of different quality to the crowning achievements of Howard K. Smith, the crowning glory of Richard Nixon's magnificent career,
And you've had front page articles which really are notorious and extraordinary.
And it's favorable.
I haven't seen, you know, I've read every lie in the news that we're waiting to attack somebody.
You'll get something out of it, but now we have to divide.
Like, I've had to come out for strong defense.
That'll make some of the police next work.
And that's not the peace.
That's some of the strong defense.
People will say, why the hell is he for an ADN that's not hitting our suburbs?
We're going to build anything.
But nevertheless, you can divide.
But that's the way the thing goes.
but I mean that we got through two trips actually well I mean three actions that helped China trip and then the main decision probably which was to really have an effect such as such as we hadn't ever realized I mean that really got me focused so you think you know ever since that war has been going pretty well
And it would have lost him now.
The reporting, Mr. President, I must say, Al David, before you were gone, did a magnificent job.
We had a couple of backgrounders that he handled it well.
He arranged for you to get on the race and get stuff coming out of Vietnam.
The story is, I find it hard to believe.
You just keep seeing North Vietnam failures and the success of it.
Every day, we have had strong, strong pieces coming out of here.
Oh, they're doing it.
Every day.
We've had this week, let's see, I think it's Bradshaw, the senator who's over there, who reports to me, both wire services and all three networks have been carrying stories about the effectiveness of the mine, of smart bombs that were using the laser-controlled bombs, which
It was terribly effective to get that out, because that drew the comparison between now and 66, and showed the pictures of the bridges down.
Tremendously good photographs.
The clear impression that you get following the Vietnam news is that the South Vietnamese are winning the war, or we're winning the war.
We're destroying the North.
In fact, there was an Ora Kelly piece this week which said that what a horrible thing we are doing to North Vietnam.
We're destroying it.
If this keeps on another month, the country is destroyed.
He's a very erratic reporter.
The point is that it's clear, as the news comes back, and they did a bang-up job when you were gone.
The news comes back that we really have done a job of naval gunfire, bombing the mines.
No ships have gotten in.
Oh, shit, they'll never get in.
Good, they'll get in.
They'll be sunk.
Except that they haven't been able to organize for an attack, that their own leadership is paralyzed.
They also have not been able to organize an attack on us at all.
That's true.
It's his own, isn't it?
Oh, God.
We couldn't get them to bring the end of the war amendment.
The Case Church, they do a record vote.
We wanted them to because we wanted them to.
They wouldn't bring it to a record vote.
They defeated it by voice note.
Why not?
Well, there wasn't one of those guys who wanted to stand up and vote against you.
That showed you the intensity of the threats, wasn't it?
Clark McGregor went up to try to work them into getting an idiot.
He worked at it with Bill Phillips, trying to get them into the record vote so we could get these bastards who were voting against the country while you were abroad.
Yeah.
And not a lot of them.
There was nobody.
They just went through with it, beat it on a voice vote, and a foreign aid authorization came through without an idiot.
Well, you remember we won that sea strike, the bird event, was it 48th or 43rd?
43rd.
They couldn't get enough people to have a roll call, those this week, on the passage of the final night.
And that's in two weeks.
Totally confused about it.
Demonstrated to have been able to put on nothing.
I couldn't see, that's empty.
I couldn't go there.
I didn't see anything.
Which exit was it?
That's there.
We paid not much, not support.
Oh, yes.
Well, maybe there's some way to get him invited over here at some point, but that's really what Crowe, I think, would want.
Well, I think you could do that.
I didn't try to talk to him about it.
Of course, the contrast is present in the viewer, seeing you on television in the very, the marvelous grand receptions, Poland, Iran, the great coverage of Mrs. Nixon, the very historic agreements being signed.
The contrast of that with Governor Humphrey has just been absolutely vivid.
Well, I'm going to cut off all A's.
We're chunking favors now.
Harris' coalition of all, 75 to 10, the people would rather stay and fight in Vietnam than abandon the Vietnam War.
And by 45 to 38, oppose any coalition government.
He said the hawkish sentiment is that he's about to fight with us.
The hawkish sentiment is coming back to us wrong now.
People begin to sense that...
We're doing pretty damn well, but American casualties are down, which they are.
I mean, 10 this week, that's not... That's all the help.
10 is less than 20, than 30, frankly, is.
Well, anything under 100, people don't think there's a war going on.
That is true.
And, you know, 19 Americans killed last week.
They're used to hearing about 25 killed on automobiles on a weekend.
They're safe.
I mean, it's a...
Just that the numbers, the word is depersonalized.
As long as the recording continues as it is, you have total freedom on this issue.
We don't know.
What do you want to do?
Do you want to decimate that god-damned place?
So that when we get out, it's up to the Vietnamese to look themselves for what?
Are Vietnamese going to get real hurt today?
It's about time.
So it should have been done years ago.
Well, this is the Indian who we read in reports.
My God, they've lost all their tanks in the Central Highlands.
They hit.
The Ho Chi Minh Trail is now underway.
They've got a hell of a lot of equipment.
They can't get back up that trail.
The South Vietnamese really put the steam on them, and they're apparently using the Marines very effectively from one area to the next.
This could set them back years in terms of being able to ever do this again.
If they gambled, then you wouldn't dare react.
Of course, the American press would get down on the rest of us.
We'd have to keep dying.
You know, our little exercise of making the meat probe has had a hell of an impact.
Has it?
Yes.
I'd be saving it.
I'll send you a memo.
But I would say we've had about 10 who have said we were wrong, including, God, including Cal.
Everybody was predicting disaster, doomsday, when the president made his decision on May 9th.
But look at what's happened.
And the critics were wrong.
And his detractors were wrong.
And even Kel said I was wrong.
I think he said I was wrong, in my case.
We sent their statements to all our editors and broadcasters and... Good.
...wrote them letters and said, aren't you going to have... And the squeals?
Yeah, quite a few.
Yeah.
They couldn't squeal about their statements, though, did they?
No.
What they did was to swallow them.
I'll give them some credit for this to happen.
It stuck it to them and they...
Credibility.
Credibility, exactly.
That's the thing that really has them concerned.
And when you've got a good one like this, we can make some real, real points.
And I think we did this one.
Wallace is not doing well, as I gave you in the first.
No, I haven't.
It's a physical condition.
Yes, sir.
What's that?
Well, it's a collapse of the abdominal walls and the infection that is right next to it.
Well, we have current, current, current, current.
What the hell, did the doctors do well?
The doctors did well, but the, and when you have a bullet in that position, you can't get it out, you can't get infections, and he said severe infections.
Nobody has seen him, I heard that.
We're closing off the three heads.
The, nobody's been living with the three heads, have they?
I talked to Dr. Ward last night, who's been checking with the president, and he said that he yesterday had an improvement for the first day, but three days they thought he was slipping away from it.
They still consider his condition precarious, but getting better.
They obviously now, however, because of the severe infection, cannot operate until it heals.
He is not responding to any antibiotic treatments and
So they have to rely on body strength to repel the infection, which is very questionable.
It's interesting.
If I had time, I was here.